Under his control the department of war was greatly advanced in dignity and importance, receiving a character far more distinctive and independent of other branches of the Government than it had previously claimed. He infused into all its operations an energy till then unknown, introducing improvements so extensive and comprehensive as to occasion apprehension of an almost too powerful and independent system of military organization. It is a fact universally conceded that his administration of the War Office was incomparably superior to that of any official who has filled that position--contributing more to the promotion of efficiency in the army, to the advancement of those great national establishments so vital to the security of the nation, and to the systematic, practical management of the details of the office. In reviewing Mr. Davis' conduct of this important department of the Government, the splendid improvements which he inaugurated, his earnest and unceasing labors in behalf of the efficiency of the army, it is impossible to overestimate his eminent services to the Union, which even at that time his traducers and those of the South would pretend he was plotting to destroy. In the Cabinet, as in the Senate, there was no measure of national advantage to which he did not give his cordial support, no great national institution which he would not have fostered with generous and timely sympathy; nothing to which he was not zealously committed, promising to redound to the glory, prosperity, and perpetuity of that Union, in whose service he had been trained, whose uniform he had proudly worn, and beneath whose banner he had braved a soldier's death.